SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 28 November 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
Site updated on 27 November 2023
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Compton, D G
(1930-2023) UK author, born of parents who were both in the theatre; he increasingly lived in the USA after 1981. As Guy Compton, he published some unremarkable detective novels, beginning with Too Many Murderers (1962), and as by Frances Lynch produced some nonfantastic Gothics throughout his career; but soon turned to sf with tales almost always set in the Near Future, and anatomizing moral dilemmas within that arena: the future is very clearly ...
Matter Duplication
This sf trope is a logical spinoff from the concept of Matter Transmission (which see). A malfunctioning matter transmitter may produce duplicates of the persons or objects transported, as has happened more than once with the Star Trek transporter: there is a duplicate Captain Kirk in the original-series episode "The Enemy Within" (1966) and an evil duplicate Spock in James Blish's ...
Rosenblum, J Michael
(1917-1978) One of the early major figures in UK Fandom, active from the mid-1930s in the Leeds sf group, about whose internal controversies he wrote in Thrilling Wonder Stories for February 1938; he attended the historically important 1937 Convention held in Leeds, West Yorkshire. His Fanzines included The Futurian (8 issues 1938-1940), its ...
Core, The
Film (2003). Paramount Pictures in association with MFO Munich Film Partners. Directed by Jon Amiel. Written by Cooper Layne, John Rogers. Cast includes Aaron Eckhart, Delroy Lindo, Hilary Swank and Stanley Tucci. 135 minutes. Colour. / Although it might seem like an update of Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), The Core owes its plot and style to 1990s Disaster movies like ...
Kyle, Kristen
Pseudonym of US author Christine K Benson (? - ); of her several romance fictions, Nighthawk (1997), a dynasty romance set at the heart of a Galactic Empire, is sf. A love/hate triangle is involved. [JC]
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. His first professional publication was the long sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly), though he only began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and sf ...